Announcement Regarding Supplemental Material

"Beginning November 1, 2010, The Journal of Neuroscience will no longer allow authors to include supplemental material when they submit new manuscripts and will no longer host supplemental material on its web site for those articles. When articles are published, authors will be allowed to include a footnote with a URL that points to supplemental material on a site they support and maintain, together with a brief description of what the supplemental material includes, but that supplemental material will not be reviewed or hosted by The Journal....Online supplemental material initially seemed to bring only benefits. Making more information available is a good goal, and the financial costs of storing extra material electronically are small. However, it has become increasing clear that there are other costs to supplemental material as currently implemented....Most well qualified reviewers are overburdened with requests to review manuscripts, and many feel that it is too much to ask them to also evaluate supplemental material that can be as extensive as the article itself. It is obvious to editors that most reviewers put far less effort (often no effort) into examining supplemental material....We have carefully considered alternatives to removing supplemental material from the peer review process, but have found none acceptable. The idea of demanding that reviewers thoroughly examine supplemental material is impractical...."